In addition to improvements in existing tools like prism grows and surface intersection, TGrid 4.0 offers a new surface wrapper tool. The wrapper provides faster turnaround time for meshing (from CAD to volume meshing) in complicated geometry while retaining excellent mesh quality and including more complex geometry details.

Through testing trials for front-end underhood applications, the wrapper, as compared to the traditional method of meshing, has proven to reduce the turnaround time from seven weeks to only one week.

Ron LaFon at Cadalyst has reviewed the newest workstation graphics card from ATI Technologies. The ultra high performance ATI FireGL V7350 comes with 1GB of memory, the first readily available graphics card to offer that much base memory.

On the ProE-03 viewset from Spec ViewPerf 8.10, the V7350 produced a weighted geometric mean score of 58.32. Although these are not the highest scores I've seen on these benchmarks, they are respectable. If you have large or particularly complex models that can take advantage of the 1GB of memory on the V7350, you'll likely see significant performance benefits.

CoolitPCB, the price shattering CFD software for board level analysis, is delivering major new functionality in its latest release. Now shipping, V2.0 simulates traces, a feature unique for CFD software. The user can import board artwork directly for thermal analysis.

V2.0 also delivers the ability to handle transient flow, which augments the software's existing capabilities to test for standard JEDEC forced, free convection, slots as well as custom setups. CoolitPCB also reports component junction temperature, case temperature, as well as detailed 3D airflow and temperature distribution.

Flownex has released version 6.9 of their Flownex systems CFD software that enables users to perform detail design, analysis and optimization of a wide range of thermal-fluid systems ranging from simple pipe networks to complex systems such as gas turbine engines or combined cycle power plants.

Flownex 6.9 features several enhancements including dynamically generated input pages allowing for group editing of components, the ability to generate intermediate results during transients, the ability to generate restart sets when including an advanced reactor model and many more.

Please visit www.flownex.com for more info as well as a fully functional demo that can be downloaded.

In Trends in Design Analysis, Mike Hudspeth describes the growing use of design analysis and how it has positively affected product quality.

Nowadays, things are much easier. The hours are still long, but the coffee is much better. Product development happens practically overnight. Schedules are tight, but the job gets done because you have tools that let you do what no one ever dreamed could be done. Part of what makes it worth your while to build exacting 3D computer models is what you can do with them. They're not just pretty pictures anymore.

In the Desktop Engineering article "Going Parallel the New Way", Ilya Mirman describes how desktop software such as Excel and Matlab can be used to solve complex problems traditionally solved using low level programming languages, such as, FORTRAN or C.

...parallel programming is difficult and the "software gap" that exists between new hardware capabilities and actual benefits from programming is wide and growing. There is a dearth of applications available for parallel computers, and custom development of parallel applications today is fundamentally flawed.